B U S I N E S S
The Valley’s Urban Future Sam Garcia Architect, LLC Creates Visionary Architecture in the Rio Grande Valley
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After the family moved into their dream home, Sam would ride his bike through the neighborhood to see the homes families were building. “That was, to me, a formative experience in my life,” he said. “I enjoyed seeing how construction was done. I enjoyed looking at the floor plans and the drawings, and walking through the site while the work was being done. It was always kind of a neat thing [to me].” In the summer of 1997, he unknowingly took the first step toward that future when he took a campus tour at the University of TexasAustin. The students were taken to the College of Business and the College of Natural Sciences, the College of Engineering. Still, none of those areas resonated with Sam. “I asked the tour guide to take the group to see the College of Architecture,” he said. “When we walked into the school, the environment was completely different. I realized then, that this is what I wanted to do.” Garcia fell in love with the campus and the College of Architecture. He began taking classes in 1998. He set goals, which at the time, didn’t include living and working in the Rio Grande Valley.
RGVISION MAGAZINE
Creative. Innovative. Talented. Those are just some of the words that some in McAllen’s business and civic communities might use to describe Sam Garcia and his team at Sam Garcia Architect, LLC. For 10 years, Sam Garcia has been driven to transform the landscape of McAllen and other Rio Grande Valley communities into meccas of urban design. The drive to build things, and the desire to create visionary architecture that rivals the skylines of other Texas cities in his adopted hometown, was something that sprung to life in Sam Garcia when he was very young. Sam, who was 12 years old at the time, remembers the excitement he and his parents shared as they drew up their own floor plan and design for what became their dream home. “I got to be involved with it and see that process unfold,” he said. His parents didn’t have any construction experience, Garcia said. His father drove a school bus for a living, and his mother was a secretary, so they spent many weekends at the public library researching house plans and were able to take their ideas to the builder to create their custom floor plan. It was amazing to see it all come to life.
MAY/JUN 2023
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